Recycling contributions of dumpsite waste pickers in Bantar Gebang, Indonesia
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Recycling contributions of dumpsite waste pickers in Bantar Gebang, Indonesia Shunsuke Sasaki1 · Kohei Watanabe2 · Kwangho Lee3 · Niluh Widyaningsih4 · Youngmin Baek1 · Tetsuya Araki5 Received: 5 July 2019 / Accepted: 13 May 2020 © Springer Japan KK, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Researchers and donors consider informal recyclers as an important part of improving waste management in developing countries. This study investigates data relating to the recycling rate of waste pickers in Bantar Gebang, Republic of Indonesia. The study estimates the net weight of soft plastic and hard plastic recycling achieved by these waste pickers. Data were obtained from qualitative and quantitative field surveys conducted over a total of 808 days, from February 2010 to January 2018. Based on 78 households with a total of 156 individuals, the average monthly weight of collected recyclables was 126.7 kg per household. The average monthly weight of collected recyclables on an individual basis varied between 81.0 and 63.3 kg, depending on the number of informal recyclers in the household. The estimated total weight of collected recyclables was 3617.6 tons per month. Bosses sold these collected recyclables to different recycling factories depending on the expected profit. It was estimated that the activities of the waste pickers produced at least 725.4 tons of recycled pellets of soft plastic and 280.8 tons of recycled pellets and flakes of hard plastic. The informal recycling rate for all waste and non-organic waste on the site was 1.6% and 9.3%, respectively. Keywords Informal recycling rate · Dumpsite waste picking · Recycled pellet · Indonesia
Introduction Background Researchers and donors consider informal recyclers as an important part of improving waste management in Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-020-01060-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Shunsuke Sasaki [email protected] 1
developing countries. Thus, informal recycling may be regarded as a contributor to municipal waste management [1–3]. In recent years, some researchers have studied and referred to the necessity of incorporating existing informal recycling systems into the operations of formal municipal solid waste management [1, 3–6]. Several researchers have quantitatively reported on the activities of informal dumpsite recyclers. However, based on quantitative and qualitative research, few studies have examined how recyclables reach a recycling factory or what proportion of these recyclables become secondary materials. The informal recycling rate has been estimated in many places; 4.0% in Bangkok [6], 16% in Karachi [6], 1% in Manila [6], and 4.9% in Bekasi [7]. However, there is little data on the quantity of secondary raw materials made from recyclables collected by dumpsite waste pickers.
Institute of Asia‑Pacific Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
2
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts, T
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